MDDM23: La Cuisine

[Dave Monroe]

"Year by year, sleepless and too often smileless, I
acquir'd the arts of la Cuisine,-- until, one day, at
last, I had become a Chef.  And presently, as these
things unfold, Paris was at my feet.
   "I'll say it for you,-- poor Paris!  Here were
great Houses getting into violent feuds over my pates,
the Queen commenting upon my Blanquette de Veau.  I
quickly grew too self-important to understand that it
was my Novelty they were after, not my cooking,-- a
realization I delay'd for longer than prov'd wise...."
(M&D, Ch. 37, p. 371)

>From Piero Camporesi, Exotic Brew: The Art of Living
in the Age of Enlightenment (Trans. Christopher
Woodall, Cambridge: Polity, 1994), Ch. 1, "The Science
of Savoir Vivre," pp. 1-11 ...

"The crisis of European consciousness that Paul Hazard
situates betwen 1680 and 1715 coincided with a
revolution in the tradition of late-Renaissance eating
and dining arts and the gradual distancing of Italy
from the centres of cultural iinovation.  These 'hars
packed years, full of struggles and upheavals and
brimming with thought' saw the cultural axis shift
from central-southern Europe to the north-west, from
the Mediterranean to the North Sea.  Over the next two
centuries the grammar of European cuisine would follow
patterns qute different from those of the
Roman-Florentine school: the light now flooding from
Versailles was to penetrate even Italy's refined
Renaissance courts.
   "Along with the gospels of the nouveaux
philosophes, the France of the conquerants, of the
warmongering, quick-tempered Gauls, began to export
armies of cooks and coiffeurs, tailors and dancing
masters. empiricist popularizers and social
interpreters of the newest trends to emerge from its
burgeoning civilisation.  With that tinge of cloying,
inverted provincialism which was as irritating then as
it is now, Pietro Verri complained that the 'science
of savoir vivre' and 'certain social delicacies, which
the French understand so well, are quite unknown to us
Italians, especially in the southern part of Italy'.
   "Many a noble cuisine fell into the hands of
Frrenchifying cooks who proceeded with lofty
pigheadedness to enforce the new laws of their
transalpine code...." (p. 1)

Not quite what I wanted to get to, but I never do stop
resarching all these little things, so ...

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Try FREE Yahoo! Mail - the world's greatest free email!
http://mail.yahoo.com/